– Microsoft attorney Michael Lacovara promised Judge Jackson he would be through with his cross-examination by lunchtime today, after which Fisher will face redirect questions from the government’s lawyer, then possible recross and then the government’s case will be closed. The 12 government witnesses will have taken 10 weeks to question. The 12 Microsoft witnesses are not expected to take as long, seeing as all but three are Microsoft executives. There is the possibility of two rebuttal witnesses each after that, however. Many names have been bandied about – Bill Gates and Steve Case prime among them – but nobody is giving anything away about that just yet beyond lead government attorney saying yesterday that case would be a useful witness.
– The op-ed piece in the Washington Post yesterday that caught Judge Jackson’s eye was the first effort by David Ignatius, who colleagues tell us was formerly the deputy editor of the financial section and will be writing a regular column from now on. No doubt the piece, which Microsoft’s in-house general counsel Bill Neukom referred to mischievously as court exhibit number one, was timed for maximum effect as the quotes from Steve Case were from a recent interview, and including Judge Jackson’s name in the first sentence was a canny way of getting his attention. In the piece Case is asked if he has any intention of taking on Microsoft in its operating system business, to which he retorts of course not! He goes on, AOL’s merger with Netscape has no bearing on the Microsoft case, as nothing we’re doing is competitive with Windows. In language that would no doubt produce a warm glow among the Justice Department’s legal team, Case says AOL would be crazy to try to compete with Microsoft in the OS business and says he has a lot of respect for Microsoft. I continue to live in fear of them. Case says AOL’s intention as far as Netscape is concerned is to concentrate on expanding the portal side of the business, in which it can compete effectively.
– In order to prevent exchanges between Michael Lacovara and expert witness Professor Franklin Fisher becoming bogged down further, Judge Jackson requested Lacovara make Fisher aware of the types of questions he will be asking this morning, so that Fisher can find the information to back up his responses from within his five over-stuffed ring binders in advance, rather than plow through them in the court’s time, which was sending some in the court to sleep yesterday afternoon. So, we know Lacovara will be asking Fisher his opinion about the following six items when court resumes this morning: the extent of OEM sales of Netscape’s browsers; the time it will take Microsoft to recoup its losses from its alleged predatory strategy of bundling the browser free with the operating system; Netscape’s browser market share if AOL switches to Netscape after its Microsoft agreement ends on 2001; the fraction of users that used Netscape at the beginning of 1997; how many copies of Navigator and in what formats Netscape got paid before and after the introduction of Windows 95; and finally, Fisher’s calculation of the additional cost to PC OEMs to distribute browsers from both Microsoft and Netscape.
– Chief Judge Norma Johnson in the E Barrett Prettyman court building in Washington DC that houses the Microsoft trial among others, has ordered that the press corps moves from its spot directly outside the doors to further away, over a small road, and just in the right spot to catch the freezing cross-winds that whip down Pennsylvania Avenue. Apparently the throng was getting a bit too rowdy. This is the building that coped with the Monica Lewinsky grand jury testimonies and a recent high-profile abortion case with the press in the same position. But these computers guys, they’re just a little too crazy for Judge Johnson’s liking.
